


A Shadow

by cytheriafalas



Category: American Gods (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:13:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26259232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cytheriafalas/pseuds/cytheriafalas
Summary: Set after Treasure of the Sun because what am I if not predictable. Juuuuuust enough plot to make the porn inevitable. Shadow meets Sweeney on the Hill of Tara.
Relationships: Shadow Moon/Mad Sweeney (American Gods)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 75





	A Shadow

**Author's Note:**

> It's been a hell of a long time since I wrote anything, so I'm quite rusty, but I felt pretty good banging (ahem ahem) this one out. Irish phrases come from websites, because I've never gotten further than week one in Irish Duolingo and I was too much of a coward to take Irish while I was studying at Galway.
> 
> I have a distinct history of post–character death fanfic, and I'm right in my niche here.

Shadow opened his eyes.

Everything was green, a green he’d never seen in person. It stretched as far as he could see in front of him, with a glimmer of what could have been water at the very, very extent of his vision. It didn’t occur to him to be at all concerned about where he was, or even that this was particularly strange. His life was exceptionally strange, though, so that was a shit standard of measurement.

He turned slowly, drinking in the lively, verdant green of the world around him and the sweet smell of what he thought might be clover. The grass was soft and sun-warmed beneath his bare feet. The hill he stood on was the highest point in the area, although it certainly couldn’t be called anything _but_ a hill, with a scattering of smaller mounds nearby in a way that smacked of intent. Shadow couldn’t quite fathom what the point of making many smaller hills on a larger one would be. Then again, there were a lot of things he couldn’t fathom these days.

But there he was, standing directly behind Shadow. His eyes were closed, chin tipped a little up, golden sun rays lighting the unmarred skin of his face. He held his arms out just a little to the side, palms facing forward. He wore the familiar white shirt and dark braces, with jeans a little tattered but not bloodstained, and he also stood barefoot on the green carpet of grass. Athick, braided gold band hung around his neck, not quite closed in front.

Shadow watched him breathe. His chest rose and fell, slow and steady. Shadow could have stayed there and watched him breathe, but as the shock passed, the word slipped through his lips anyway.

“Sweeney?”

Sweeney’s eyes opened slowly, and he gazed at Shadow. “This was once the seat of all power ’n Ireland. If you held Tara, you held the whole isle in your palm.” Sweeney folded his fingers into his palms and let his arms fall to his sides.

As if from a mist, great wood and stone buildings appeared all around them. They faded in and out until only the mounds and a stone pillar a few feet high just behind Sweeney’s left shoulder were left.

“Are you—” Shadow swallowed, afraid to ask. “Is this—”

Sweeney crossed the few paces between them and took Shadow’s hand. He pressed Shadow’s open palm against his chest. The fabric felt familiar and, most importantly, real. The warmth of Sweeney’s living body soaked into Shadow’s palm.

He wanted to curl his fingers in and grab a fistful of this fabric, but Sweeney’s hand was firm, keeping his palm flat. Instead, Shadow found himself staring into Sweeney’s eyes.

“It’s me.” Sweeney’s smile was mirthless. “A shadow of me, anyway.”

Shadow didn’t smile. “Did you bring me here?”

“No.”

“How did I—”

“Does it matter?”

No. It didn’t.

Sweeney closed his eyes, breathing deep, Shadow’s hand still held to his chest. He thought he could feel the steady _thud thud thud_ of a heartbeat beneath his palm.

“I’m sorry,” Shadow said.

“I was a _god_. A king. The shinin’ light of my people, reduced to Mad Sweeney by the priest of an upstart invader.” Those eyes opened, pinning Shadow in place as effectively as any jail cell ever had. “Do you believe ’n me?”

“Believe you? Of course—“

“Fucking _listen_ for once. Do you believe _in_ me?”

Shadow placed his hand on the side of Sweeney’s neck. The metal was cold against the side of his hand, and Sweeney’s heavy, solid pulse thrummed against his fingertips.

“Yes.”

And he did. More than he believed in anything. More than Wednesday. More than Nancy. He believed in Sweeney more than he believed in himself right now, more than this land that brought out the green in Sweeney’s eyes.

“I shouldn’ta fucked her. Dead wife. I shouldn’ta fucked her.”

Whether this place eased the pain Shadow had felt when he’d first learned this or if killing the man who had killed and then fucked his dead-not-dead wife had been catharsis enough, Shadow’s instinctual reaction to punch the Irish bastard in the face was strangely absent.

Sweeney cocked his head suddenly. “D’you hear that?”

“Hear what?” But as soon as he asked, Shadow heard quiet music on the air around them. Flutes or pipes of some sort, drums, and violins, or maybe fiddles. He didn’t know what they were exactly, but it seemed very Irish. “The music? Yeah.”

That seemed to ease Sweeney’s mind. He let out a soft breath and turned his eyes back to Shadow’s. “I thought you were her.”

“I can see how you’d make that mistake. We look so much alike—”

Sweeney shoved him backward a step with the first violence Shadow had seen from him since he’d opened his eyes here. His hand was cold where he’d been touching Sweeney’s skin and hot where he’d been touching the metal. He flexed his fingers and rubbed his palm absently against his thigh.

“She was the closest I could get to you. I was lost. Confused.” Sweeney laughed bitterly. “Mad.” Without so much as a break for a breath, he continued, “Had me a wife once. A wife and a daughter. Eorann and Moira, perfect and innocent. Too good for the likes o’ me. What’d they think of me now? An’ a son, Sétanta. He killed _his_ son. Maybe ’t runs in the blood.”

“Sweeney—“

“Wouldja worship me, Shadow?” Sweeney stepped close to him, a slow, stalking movement. “Wouldja leave me offerin’s?” His calloused hands cupped Shadow’s face with astonishing tenderness. “Think of me when you saw a fairy circle?”

“I—“

Sweeney kissed him. He pulled back before Shadow could process anything but the feeling of lips on his. “Wouldja leave me honeyed bread?” A kiss to his temple. “Meadowsweet an’ yew?” His cheek bone. “Fresh cream from milk?” The corner of his lips. “Agate from a lakeshore?” His jaw, just beneath his ear. “A gold coin?” His throat. “Cake t’ call me back t’you?”

“Yes.”

Sweeney let out a breath, the hot air ghosting across Shadow’s skin. “Be careful of the promises you’re makin’ me, darlin’. You don’t wanna cross the fair folk.”

It was hard to concentrate with Sweeney’s lips and teeth on his throat. Shadow gripped Sweeney’s hips in a futile effort to center himself. “I’ve already crossed you and lived to tell the tale.”

Sweeney barked out a laugh, finally pulling away to look down into Shadow’s eyes. “Aye, that you have.”

And then Sweeney kissed him again, long and deep this time. He _demanded_ Shadow’s attention, and Shadow was willing to give it. He pressed the full length of their bodies together, hands skimming down Sweeney’s back and to his ass. Sweeney groaned into his mouth when Shadow squeezed, jerking their hips tighter together.

“Oh, fuck _me_ ,” Sweeney breathed. He yanked Shadow’s shirt open without so much as a by-your-leave for the buttons.

“I’d rather you fucked me.” Shadow wasn’t quite sure what had made him say that, but to see the awestruck look on Sweeney’s face as he was rendered absolutely wordless was well worth it.

While Sweeney was distracted, he tugged the other man’s shirt over his head. Shadow kissed his way down Sweeney’s chest. Sweeney’s entire body shuddered when Shadow’s tongue swept across his nipple. He leaned into Shadow’s arms like they were the only thing supporting him.

“Down,” Shadow ordered.

Sweeney offered him a curse in Irish and obeyed, pulling Shadow down with him. “Who’re you t’ order a king around?”

Shadow braced one hand on the ground near Sweeney’s side and pinched his nipple in response. Sweeney’s back arched, a litany of curses streaming from his lips. Shadow soothed the pain with his lips and tongue.

“You’re a right bastard, y’know that?”

Shadow smiled and ran his tongue across the planes of Sweeney’s chest until he reached his sternum. Then he started working his way down. He ran his fingers feather-light over Sweeney’s skin and drank in the silken strength of him, the way his abdomen flexed when Shadow nipped at the skin over the well-defined muscles.

“Never took you for a fuckin’ _tease_.”

Shadow nipped more sharply this time, again soothing the hurt with his tongue. “I’m your supplicant,” he whispered, letting his lips glide across Sweeney’s skin while he spoke. “I come to kneel at your side and beg for your favor.” Sweeney actually moaned, a deep, guttural, desperate sound. “I offer you my worship.”

Sweeney’s chest was heaving, his hands clenching in the dirt and grass at his sides. “Have a care for your words. Things you say here can’t always be taken away.”

Shadow didn’t know where the words had come from. He didn’t talk like that, but it felt right and true when he said it.

He undid the button on Sweeney’s jeans and managed to tug them off before Sweeney caught him around the waist and rolled them over, pinning Shadow in place with his bulk. And Shadow had never been particularly into the thought of being held down or restrained, but with Sweeney over him like this, he was beginning to see the attraction.

“I give you my boon, Moon Shadow.”

The urgency was back in Sweeney’s movements. He, too, kissed his way down Shadow’s chest, tasting and biting, always working at the button on Shadow’s jeans. He was as gentle at taking off Shadow’s pants as he had been with his shirt, but once the last of the fabric was gone, he pressed their bodies together, cock hard between them.

“Is your dick your boon, Sweeney?”

Sweeney laughed. His lips were at Shadow’s neck, kissing and sucking and biting. “Certainly can be, a stór. You askin’?”

“I think I want you to kiss me again.”

The smile lit up Sweeney’s face like the sun emerging after a day of rain. Shadow lost track of time with the way Sweeney kissed, the way he braced himself on one elbow to give himself a free hand to caress Shadow’s chest, his stomach. But before long, even Sweeney’s kisses couldn’t distract from the heat that had been building from the moment Sweeney held Shadow’s hand to his chest.

“Sweeney—“

“Shh. I’ve got you.” And he did. He rolled his hips in a motion that had to have been why Christianity was so hung up on the sinfulness of sex. “S’long as you worship me, I’ll have you.”

This was clearly a dream world, because Shadow’s experience with anal sex had required quite a bit of preparation. This did not. All this required was for Sweeney to pull back and adjust Shadow so his thighs rested against Sweeney’s hips.

He’d wondered how far the dream world would carry them, if there’d be pain here, but he felt only the pressure of the head of Sweeney’s cock against him and then fullness and bliss. Sweeney leaned in to kiss Shadow once more, giving Shadow a moment to adjust before he began moving in earnest.

And Shadow swore and wrapped his legs tighter around Sweeney’s waist. Despite his earlier tenderness, Sweeney fucked like he fought. He gave no quarter, and Shadow didn’t ask. Shadow wanted the bruises to remember this moment; he wanted the ache deep in his bones. He even wanted the split lip where their kiss had been more teeth than lip.

The grass and dirt slipped beneath his back, but Sweeney held him in place. And before too long, they figured out how their bodies fit together, and Shadow learned how to press against Sweeney in a way that made him curse in Irish as though he’d lost his English. And Sweeney lifted Shadow’s hips with one arm and mind-numbing, toe-curling pleasure shocked through Shadow’s body.

“ _Fuck_ , Sweeney!”

Sweeney laughed. He took Shadow’s cock in his hand. It was almost more the sight of him, sweat shining on his skin, muscles flexing with each movement, the long line of his throat when he tipped his head back as a particular wave of pleasure rolled through him that finally did Shadow in. Not that the near-brutal pace and the flick of Sweeney’s wrist didn’t help.

Shadow arched into Sweeney’s grip as he came, gasping words that must have been unintelligible at best and nonsense at worst. Sweeney’s long, drawn-out moan was only slightly more put-together when he fell forward, catching himself on his hands just before crashing completely into Shadow.

They lay still for a long moment, breathing each other’s air as Sweeney looked down at Shadow in awe and Shadow gazed back, memorizing every fleck of green and brown in this man’s eyes.

“A chuisle mo chroí,” Sweeney breathed as he pulled back enough to separate them, then dropped to his side next to Shadow.

“What’s that mean?” Shadow asked.

“Hm? Oh. ’T means ‘pulse of my heart.’”

“And the other thing?” Shadow tried to pronounce the words Sweeney had said, butchering them hopelessly as he did. “Ah store?”

Sweeney laughed, and Shadow would never get enough of that sound. He couldn’t remember ever hearing it when Sweeney was… well, alive. Bitter laughter, yes. An angry bark of a sound, yes. Sometimes even a chuckle.

“‘A stór’ means ‘my treasure.’”

“Am I a part of your hoard, then?”

Sweeney stretched up to kiss Shadow. Almost enough for Shadow’s cock to start having interest in the proceedings. “Nah. Too precious for the hoard, y’are. Can’t risk lettin’ you outta my sight or someone might snatch you away from me.”

“Sweeney—‘’ Shadow’s throat closed with grief. “Sweeney, I’m so sorry.”

Sweeney pulled him in close, sharing the warmth of his body that was in such stunning contrast to whenever Shadow touched Laura. “Don’t be. I made my choice long ago, a stór. ‘M sorry you had to be the one t’do it.”

The music on the wind grew suddenly louder, and for the first time, Sweeney looked concerned. He kissed Shadow once more, then stood, offering his hand to help pull Shadow to his feet.

“What is it?”

“Our time’s runnin’ short. Remember what you promised me, Shadow Moon. What I done may’ve been suicidal, but ‘twasn’t suicide. Believe in me enough an’ maybe I can come back t’you.”

Sweeney kissed his forehead.

Shadow opened his eyes.


End file.
